Encyclopedia or Dictionary Selections

Within the context of how new Christian denominations relate healing systems with the Bible, Paulson cites different traditions that lie on the spectrum between continuationists who believe healing is still possible, such as the Christian Scientists, and the cessationists who see healing as ended with the apostles, and work with medicine for a cure. Christian Science spiritual healing mirrors Christ’s authority.

The metaphysical nature of the religious belief and practice of Christian Science triggered theological, ecclesial, legal, medical, scientific, and moral controversies. Mary Baker Eddy also dealt with stress and trauma throughout her life. The metaphysical aspect of Christian Science does not detract from its practicality in human experience, as the metaphysically induced healing is evidence of the full salvation to come.

The focus of this article is an explanation of Christian Science within the religious context of its American origin and development. Melton claims that Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism prepared the way for two important religious movements of the 19th- century: Christian Science and New Thought. The author also gives relative importance to the role of independent Christian Scientists.

Fraser, a harsh critic of Christian Science, focuses on the history of its health practices in relation to the development of Western medicine. Eddy “left a movement that American society found simultaneously appealing (in its emphasis on Emersonian self-reliance) and troubling (for its wholesale rejection of medicine).”

This brief encyclopedic entry, written at the request of The Mary Baker Eddy Library, offers in three pages a succinct outline of Mary Baker Eddy’s life and a clear and accurate portrayal of her importance as a student of the Bible and religious thinker. “Her unique method of biblical interpretation will be of interest to biblical scholars… independently of the religion she founded and the healing-system she established.”

Ivey’s history of Christian Science covers a broad range of topics including a brief history of Eddy’s personal preparation for the founding of the Church, the healing theology of Christian Science, the establishment of the Church, broader contexts of the appeal of Christian Science, the role of language for its expression, the maturing years in the early 20th century, and the challenges of adapting to a changing world in the late 20th century.

Ivey presents historical context for the 19th-century emergence of metaphysical religions and their evolution into the 20th century. He highlights the inter-relationships between the practice of Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and the ensuing movements. Ivey differentiates the theology of Christian Science from Quimby and New Thought—with the human mind acting as a conduit between spirit and matter.

Ivey chronicles the late 19th century expansion of both New Thought and Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science church in the Midwest: the graduates of Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College who established institutes in six Midwest cities, the most important early organizers of Christian Science services, the establishment of The Principia as an independent school, and New Thought’s Emma Curtis Hopkins many organizers.

Cunningham provides a thorough introduction to the life of Mary Baker Eddy, theological distinctions of Christian Science, the Church founding, evolution of the Church Manual, more recent developments such as recent legal and financial struggles, the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library, and whether Eddy and her followers were feminists.

Voorhees’s article largely represents a traditional Christian Science perspective on homosexuality in 2006. The article’s headings include “Theological Views on Companionship,” “Theological Views on Sexuality,” “Altering Christian Science Theology for LGBTQ Advocacy,” “Perspectives on Homohatred,” and “Organization and LGBTQ experience.”

Setta, a feminist scholar of 19th-century American religion, identifies some cultural attitudes of Mary Baker Eddy’s day and Eddy’s distinct response to them. Rather than attributing her poor health to her gender, Eddy argued that ‘man’ (both male and female) is God’s spiritual reflection. Society, not God, produced the idea of gender; therefore women could take responsibility for their own health.

Peel, a highly respected scholar and Christian Scientist, represents Christian Science in this dictionary of pastoral care and counseling. Explaining its healing ministry, he addresses the unique theology, metaphysics, and practice of Christian Science. Peel also authored the next dictionary entry on “Christian Science Practitioner,”—practitioner qualifications, status within the church, and role with patients.

Treacy-Cole outlines Eddy’s rocky and sometimes tragic life story through childhood, marriages, motherhood, illnesses and financial struggles—leading up to years of deep Bible study, her discovery of Christian Science, the writing of her textbook, Science and Health, and organization of her Church. Treacy-Cole finds early Christian patriarchy as precedent for 19th-century male clergy and press dismissal of Mary Baker Eddy.

Schoepflin includes short sections on the Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons and Christian Scientists, seeing them as movements which used science as a “tool for apologetics.” He shows how Mary Baker Eddy combined the tools of science (reason and empiricism—in the evidence of bodily healing) with “the spiritual and immaterial dimensions of Christianity” (311).

Historian Benowitz’s encyclopedia profile of Augusta Stetson is a chronology of her life from devout Methodist upbringing, to public orator, to Eddy’s request for her to establish Christian Science in New York City, to her increasingly problematic leadership and eventual excommunication from Eddy’s Church.

Historian Benowitz’s encyclopedia profile of Mary Baker Eddy is a chronology of her life: her childhood and early marriage and widowhood; her desperate attempts to find healing; her early struggles to establish herself; the publication of her textbook, Science and Health, in 1875; the tumultuous beginnings of her Church characterized by lawsuits and disenchanted students; establishing The Christian Science Monitor.

Gottschalk’s overview of Christian Science sees it as not philosophically derived but based on the works and salvation of Jesus, a new interpretation of the gospel, and the “operation of divine power comprehended as spiritual law.” Gottschalk compares Christian Science and traditional Christian views, as well as distinguishes it from idealism, pantheism, mind cure, and New Thought.

Gottschalk objects to religious historians designating Christian Science as harmonialism. He argues that the emphasis on the Bible and Christ in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings precludes the focus on ‘using’ methods for the primary purpose of comfort, health and wealth, control and power, that are exercised in the service of gaining and keeping harmony in one’s own life.

Gottschalk identifies Christian Science as “a religious movement emphasizing Christian healing as proof of the supremacy of spiritual over physical power.” He documents Christian Science emerging during a period of social and religious crisis, exemplified by the struggle over science (Darwinism) and faith (biblical critical scholarship). Although abandoning her Calvinist upbringing, Eddy clung to a strongly theistic, biblical solution to ‘the problem of being.’

Gottschalk notes that newer scholarship (of the 1980s) had begun to reassess Mary Baker Eddy’s work and character. For example, even though Eddy never abandoned her ingrained belief in God’s sovereignty or the equally strong conviction of God’s goodness, she was to advance in Christian Science a radical interpretation of the gospel through a new concept of God’s relation to humanity.

Nearly fifty years ago, Stokes, the spokesperson for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, answered questions about Christian Science that are still heard today. Contemporary Christian Scientists would recognize a shift in language and social engagement since the 1970s, such as “What is your attitude toward Black people, women, vaccination?” But the basic theological underpinning of the Church’s self-understanding remains valid.